Enlightened
by Jabyar
Summary: If only Harris had actually taken her to the hole. She would have given anything to spend a few hours – hell, a few days – in solitary confinement.
1. Chapter 1

**Part 1**

Things have been tense between them all week.

Not _normal _tense, like, _I can't believe you didn't tell me about your boyfriend and oh by the way Kathy's pregnant _tense.

Not, _I can't believe you didn't tell me you were back with Kathy and oh by the way months ago I tried to adopt a child _ tense.

No, this tension runs far deeper. There's a new undercurrent present that neither of them recognize or understand.

Because for the first time in a while, in years, perhaps, they're _angry _at each other. Not pissed, not irritated, not jealous, but _angry. _

And neither thinks the other has any right to be.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

In Olivia's opinion, her partner was out of his mind to do the three-day stint in jail, _on purpose_, when there was no one to save, no loftier cause. He just did it to see what it was like.

And she can't help but think that on some unconscious level he also did it to show her how easy it was. That it was no big deal.

He didn't even tell her he was going.

And then he came back, acting all traumatized, like he really suffered so terribly. Three days alone. He had to have a few conversations with himself. He nearly died of boredom counting tiles on the floor. Boo hoo.

She had spent a week at Sealview. A whole fucking week. Without a moment to herself. She'd peed in front of other people, had been groped and harassed and humiliated and physically assaulted. And all that didn't even count what had happened at the end, with Harris.

She shudders for a second, remembering it, and then she's indignant all over again, as she thinks about Elliot's measly three days, during which the worst that happened to him was boredom. At least he got to retain his identity. She'd had to do all of it pretending to be someone else, keeping up a charade.

It is true that she volunteered to do it; nobody forced her. But she didn't do it for kicks, for Christsakes. She did it to catch a rapist. A dangerous, ruthless predator. There had been a higher purpose at play.

He did it out of curiosity about the validity of a defense attorney's argument.

The way he's been going on and on about the experience, like she has no clue what it feels like to be dehumanized, it's like a slap in the face.

When she thinks back to it nowadays, she realizes she didn't prepare herself properly for prison. She thought that because creepy men leered at her and made obnoxious remarks to her every day on the job, that enduring such treatment in prison would be a piece of cake. But it wasn't. Well before the final, devastating experience, the indignities she suffered earlier in the week began to get to her. Showering, using the toilet and even being ordered around in front of others upset her more than she would have expected them to. It was like being reminded that nothing she had accomplished in her life entitled her to even the lowest of human dignities. Matthew Parker put his hands all over her, and she was powerless to stop him. He humiliated her again and again, mostly only verbally, but each incident took a little piece out of her. That horrible orange jumpsuit turned her into someone else; someone without an identity, someone who _existed_ to take orders from people like Parker and to _like _it. As a prisoner, her sole purpose was to be degraded by them. To be reminded over and over again that she was worse than nobody; she was somebody who had done something to _deserve _the deliberate and systematic stripping away of her dignity. And even though she was only pretending, pretending to be someone who had done something terrible enough to merit the state's use of tax payers' money to place her in an institution specifically designed to degrade and dehumanize, by the end, she started to believe it. That was the worst part of it all. She let Harris take her to that basement against her better judgment, because in those crucial moments when he took her away, she _believed _she was Kat, she _believed _she deserved to be punished for starting a riot, and so there was no "better judgment" to call upon in the first place. _Olivia, _in those moments, did not exist. Only Kat did. And Kat was used to not being loved, to having men abuse her, to taking the fall for them.

Sometimes Olivia thinks that perhaps she and Kat aren't so different after all. Perhaps that's why Olivia so easily _became_ Kat. Deep down, she believes she doesn't deserve the space she takes up, because no one has ever told her otherwise. Deep down, she believes she needs to be punished. Those are the hardest nights for Olivia to bear, when the underlying truth behind her subconscious behavior that day hits her over the head, when she realizes she could have prevented all of it. If only she'd been someone other than Kat. If only Kat had been someone other than Olivia.

And then there are other nights when she manages to forgive herself, when the pain isn't as bad and she can sleep without dreaming of being pushed up against a cold wall with her hands shackled behind her back. When the salve that is the passage of time does its wonders, and she can focus on other things, the good things, like the fact that she still has her partner and that things between them have been pretty good lately. That they faced near-death yet again last spring and survived. She and Elliot have grown closer since the day she rescued him from Stuckey.

And then he went ahead and disappeared for three days and came back a so-called changed man.

If _only_ Harris had actually taken her to the hole. She would have given anything to spend a few hours – hell, a few days – in solitary confinement.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

In Elliot's opinion, his partner is being pretty damn insensitive, considering she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about.

Solitary confinement is like torture. Hell, it _is _torture. After three days he's prepared to defend Donovan in court himself.

The three days were the worst of his life, worse than getting thrown off a rooftop, or shot, or stabbed by a crazy CSU tech, or nearly blinded. But he's glad he has done them, because though he almost lost his mind, he also learned something valuable. He learned that sometimes defense attorneys are right. It isn't something he would go out of his way to admit out loud, but in the privacy of his own head, he is proud of himself, for having grown a little, become a little more enlightened, as a cop, as a human being.

Olivia just doesn't understand.

Solitary confinement isn't anything like regular prison. He knows for certain that Olivia made friends with some of the other women there. Granted, they weren't women she'd normally hang out with, but at least she had other human beings to talk to, to commiserate with, to shoot the breeze with. And yes, to his knowledge, she endured some pretty nasty treatment. But she's tough as nails, his partner; she _thrives _on challenging situations. It was unpleasant, possibly humiliating, possibly even violent – he's not blind, he saw the bruise across her cheek – but it still didn't qualify as _torture. _

Apparently in his own country, a supposed beacon of enlightenment, prisoners are tortured every single day for years at a time, and it is all perfectly legal.

No wonder Donovan threw him off a rooftop. It turns out there really is such a thing as not being in one's right mind. Elliot appreciates this now. He _understands_ the need for affirmative defenses, even if most of the time they're bogus. Some of the time, _some _of the time, they are legitimate and crucial. He could have worked twenty more years in law enforcement and never known what this was like.

After only three days he thought he was going to lose his mind. Olivia keeps alluding that she thinks the experience is akin to nothing more than being incredibly bored, which sounds utterly unpleasant, she admits, but certainly doesn't justify throwing a cop off a rooftop.

But it went beyond boredom to complete sensory deprivation. There were moments when every fiber of his being demanded to be let out, every muscle of his body was primed and flexed and bursting with adrenaline-fueled energy, aching to break free of his cage, of his solitude, and he was powerless to make it happen. He screamed and screamed for attention, but nobody came. And then when his mind began to realize there was no way out, that's when the true torture began. For it was the awareness that such nothingness would _continue, _that there was absolutely no possible way to divert his focus to anything _but_ the fact that there was nothing upon which to focus, that the onset of the insanity truly took form. It had never before occurred to him that the inability to communicate one's suffering to another person represented suffering in and of itself. The compounding effect was tremendous. He would have done anything to interact with another person; hell, even endured _actual _torture if it meant communication with his torturer.

He reached his nadir on what he thinks must have been the third day. That was when he expended his last bit of sanity on the realization that he had started to lose sight of who he was, of _who, _fundamentally, he _was_, when the sound of his own name stopped making sense to him.

And so he forced himself to say his name out loud, like it was a form of exercise, like an amnesiac memorizing the name of someone he's supposed to know. He tried out different emphases, different inflections.

_I'm Elliot Stabler._

_I AM Elliot Stabler._

*I* am ELLIOT. STABLER!

But then he was presented with a quandary: With nobody to hear but his own faulty brain, he wasn't sure it counted.

And so after many hours of such uncertainty, he finally found somebody to tell.

And so he said his name aloud once again.

To a cockroach.

He _introduced _himself to a fucking cockroach.

He can't imagine being remotely functional after twenty years of this.

So how come Olivia doesn't see this? He's known her for over a decade. She is one of the most intelligent, sensitive and empathetic people he knows. So how come she's acting like what he did, what he endured, the insight he gained, isn't important?


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2**

He has noticed her jumpiness for months but has never said anything for fear of pissing her off. It bugs him even more because it's so incongruous with how well she thinks on her feet; her impromptu act with Stuckey had to be the most brilliant thing he's ever seen.

But he can't ignore what happened today. They were at Sing-Sing and she froze, noticeably, in the middle of their interview with Joseph Wilson, their leading suspect in the rape of Jamie Lyon.

He knows the right thing to do is to tell Cragen, because even the slightest issue with her reflexes could foreseeably make the difference between life and death for both of them. But he also knows that going behind her back would spell the end of their partnership. And he would never be able to live with that.

Still, he's annoyed. Why can't she get it together? Sure, she's had her share of near-misses that could shake anybody up, but Jesus, so has he.

As he's driving, he starts to count them in his head.

_Shot by Bushido._

_Knocked out by Picard._

_Stabbed by Stuckey. _

_Thrown off a rooftop by Donovan. _

And those are only the recent incidents.

Four. Four near-death experiences, not to mention nearly losing his insanity in that hell hole last week.

And _his _reflexes have never been keener.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

She didn't sleep a wink last night. Or, more precisely, the wink she slept was full of nightmares. It's been like this for a week. And like the past week, today she's irritable and pissed and feeling sorry for herself.

"I can't read your mind you know."

She whips her head to her left and glares at his profile. "What?"

He keeps his eyes on the road. "Whatever's bugging you. I can't help you unless you tell me what's wrong."

"Who said I needed your help?"

He ventures a sideways glance. "What's going on with you, Liv? Why won't you talk to me?"

"Why won't I _talk _to you?" she exclaims. "Are you kidding me?"

"You froze up in there." He hesitates. "I can't… I don't want to tell Cragen, but I have to know you can –"

"– that I can do my job without your coming to my rescue," she intones flatly. "Yes, Elliot, I know."

He narrows his eyes in confusion and turns his head briefly to look at her. "What was that?"

"What you said to me during the Gitano case."

He racks his memory for such a quotation, certain that she is mistaken. "I never said that."

"Those were your exact words," she says pointedly. "After he cut my neck."

It all comes back to him, like a grainy, black-and-white movie reel he's replaying in his mind. How the hell does she remember one off-the-cuff remark from four years ago? "Oh… oh come on, Liv, I didn't mean –"

"Ya ya ya, I know, you didn't mean anything by it."

"But it stuck with you."

She pauses. "Yeah, it did," she says after a moment.

He can hear the hurt in her voice. Still there, years later.

"So what happened today then?" he asks.

She sighs dramatically. "Nothing _happened. _I just… just don't care for prisons, okay? Is that a crime?"

"You're a cop, Liv. We have to spend our share of time in them. If you can't –"

"I _can. _It was just that guy Wilson reminded me of one of the guards at Sealview, that was all. No big deal."

He nods, like he accepts her answer, but then he makes the mistake of adding, "You seemed so spooked though. It's not like you."

"Well maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do."

He's tired of cryptic, rhetorical remarks. For once, he just wishes she'd talk to him. Really _talk. _ "What the hellis _that_ supposed to mean?"

"It just means…" She exhales, trying to think how to put it. "Fuck, Elliot, it's self-explanatory."

He stops at a red light and turns to her. "Where is this all coming from? All this hostility? You're acting like I've done something to you when the way I see it, _ I _was the one who was pushed off a rooftop, _I _was the one who nearly lost my mind in prison and who –"

"Elliot, just do me a favor, ok? Stop talking."

He's tried. What else can he do? "Fine."

"Good."

The light turns green and they drive a block in silence. "You know," he starts again after a minute, wary of her mood but determined to make his point, "at least those women could report it, they had some sort of recourse. Getting raped in prison, it's terrible, but it's _illegal_. But solitary, it's… it's _state-sanctioned_. And there's nobody to talk to to even complain about it. There's just you and the four walls. For hours, days, on end."

"Tell that to Risa Tyler," she snorts, "I'm sure she'd feel a lot better to know she had _recourse._"She smacks her forehead with her palm. "Oh wait, never mind! You can't. Because she was _murdered in prison!"_

"Liv," he sighs, "I'm not saying we should be any less outraged, I'm just saying we can be outraged about _both _things. I would have thought that you of all people would care."

Her shoulders slump and she lets out a weary breath of air. "Look, I do care. I just… I don't have the resources to deal with every problem in the universe, okay?"

"Which means you don't care," he huffs.

"All right, so sue me!" she bursts out. "I don't care!"

"I just thought that you would," he says quietly, shaking his head, disappointed.

"Why?" she challenges icily. "Why did you think that I would give a flying fuck that some violent criminal is forced to endure lousy treatment in prison?"

"Because you endured it too in prison."

She freezes. Forces herself to take a breath. Two. And then she recovers. They are clearly on such different wavelengths there is no point in even trying to make him understand. "Yeah, well, I guess I'm not a very good person then," she tosses off.

But he refuses to accept the copout. He's not hallucinating; something is going on with her, and he's determined to get to the bottom of it. "That's not it and you know it," he says.

She exhales a breath, deeply frustrated, but tired of fighting. "Elliot, look, I'm tired. Can we please just drive?"

"Fine. But you know I hate this tension between us. I wish you'd talk to me."

She turns her head, studying his profile, as if to gain insight into his obtuseness. "You wish _I'd _talk to _you?_" she asks incredulously.

"Yes. Like why you've been acting like such a bitch all week." He regrets his choice of words the second they leave his mouth.

This is the last straw. Her nerves are shot, her stomach has been doing cartwheels all day and she wants nothing more than to lean her head against the window and let the motion of the car lull her to sleep while Elliot drives back to Manhattan. But she's revved up now; she can't let this go. "Excuse me but what the _hell _have I done to you? You're the one who disappeared for three days without so much as a phone call to your partner. And now you come back acting all holier than thou, because you spent three days in the joint."

"I'm not acting holier than thou."

"Yes you are. You think you should get some sort of medal, Elliot, for spending a couple days in jail?"

The _fuck you _is just about out of his mouth before he manages to censor himself, just in the nick of time. "No, I don't. But I just… Look, you can't imagine what it's like, Liv."

But he might as well have told her off because now she's downright fuming. "I can't imagine? I can't _imagine_?" She chortles. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Solitary, I meant."

"Whatever," she grumbles, and looks out the window, dismissing him.

"Liv, with all due respect, you _weren't _in solitary when you were there."

"Fine, Elliot, you're right, I wasn't," she shoots back, her eyes still on the outside.

He's frustrated. He hates when she gets like this. She's the only person in the world he can talk to about his experiences, and she is shutting him out. He would have thought she'd be happy that he wants to confide in her. To his knowledge this is one of the things about him that has irked her for years – his propensity to clam up when something is on his mind.

"Fine," he growls, and returns his undivided attention to the road.

_Dammit,_ she thinks, as tears rush to her eyes. She had been doing so well; hadn't thought about Sealview in months, had been sleeping well, and then along came her partner, all la-dee-da about prison, and suddenly she feels as though all the work she's tried to do on herself in the last year has come undone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Part 3**

Later he comes upstairs to the locker room and she's there, having just showered. He wonders why she's showered in the middle of the day, just like that.

"Liv?"

She pretends not to hear him and turns her body to her locker so that he can only see her in profile.

He can't stand it anymore. "Liv, what the hell is going on? Seriously, I'm so tired of fighting. I just… look, I know you're annoyed about my going to jail but I can't believe that's the real reason you're so angry."

"I'm not…." She stops herself, closes her mouth. "Just… drop it, El, okay?"

He's somewhat mollified by her use of his nickname, but still, he's determined to get to the bottom of this. "I don't wanna drop it," he says, almost whinily. "Look, is this about Sealview?"

_No shit Sherlock, _she thinks, but she knows, deep down, this isn't really his fault.

He takes her silence as a yes. "I don't get you, Liv. You came back from that prison and you seemed a little shaken up but you said you were fine. And you _acted _fine. And I know this guy Harris attacked you, but your report said he only _tried_."

He watches her flinch, just a little, and all at once he's unsure of himself. "He didn't…. he didn't, uh, do anything, did he?"

She turns to face him fully. "No Elliot, you can rest easy," she replies sarcastically and he's once again bowled over by her hostility. "He only _tried, _as you put it. It was no big deal."

Alarms go off in his head, and he wonders how in the world this is the first time it has occurred to him that she might not have told him everything. "Wait a second. Did he or didn't he… " He pauses, unsure how to phrase it, "…_do_ anything to you?"

He watches her closely. She's already dressed but she clutches her towel to her body anyway, like it's some sort of security blanket. She is nervous, and he wants to know why.

"I already told you. He didn't."

"So why did your whole face change when I brought up Sealview? Why are you desperate to get off this topic?"

She's silent, her eyes on the floor.

He takes a step towards her, but stops short of invading her space. "_Answer _me, Liv. I'm your partner."

When she still doesn't answer, he can't help but get angry. "What, so now I get the silent treatment? Were you randomly pissed off at me that day and decided not to tell me what had really happened there?"

She looks up at him, her brows furrowed with shock. "You think I didn't tell you because I was trying to piss you off?" she whispers.

The way her voice quivers as she answers, so obviously trying to mask her hurt, shatters him. He doesn't correct her, tell her no, she twisted his words a little, that's not actually what he suggested. He has enough sense to realize that's not the point. He backs off. "No. No, of course not."

"You think it's just a matter of instructing my larynx to generate the words 'he tried to rape me' and that that's all there is to it?" she challenges.

"No…" Well, yes. Yes. He listens to those words come out of women's mouths every single day. And he knows it's hard for them, but for Christsakes she shouted it to the attorney in the interrogation room, so why couldn't she say it to him? Why couldn't she tell him the full story? He's her partner, her best friend. Why couldn't she trust him enough to tell him?

All at once she is transformed before his eyes. She is no longer the stubborn, tough-as-nails cop who refuses to give an inch. Suddenly she is a woman, a very human woman who is obviously hurting, all the more so by what she perceives as a betrayal of trust by her partner.

"It's so much more than that, Elliot," she says. "The words, the pain and humiliation they represent are so… visceral… and yet somehow the words don't do them justice at all."

"Liv, I –" he starts, his voice conciliatory.

She is apparently disinclined to acknowledge his shift in tone from one of confrontation to one of empathy. Instead, she is suddenly reenergized, clinging to her hostility, intent on her script. "So you wanna know what happened in that basement, Elliot? You want to hear the facts?"

"Liv –"

"No, you're so dying to know?" she interrupts fiercely, and there's fire in her eyes. "You think I owe you because you told me about your experience in solitary? All right, fine, here we go. He brought me to a dark, isolated room with a mattress in it that smelled like urine. My hands were cuffed behind my back. He looked me straight in the eye and basically told me he intended to rape me, and that I was just going to have to take it. He threw me down onto the mattress but I jumped back up before he had a chance to get on top of me. He grabbed me. I started screaming and struggling and begging him not to do it. He literally lifted me in the air. Then he pushed me up against the wall. I could feel his penis pressed against my backside. Then he kissed me. His breath was foul and his skin was sweaty and his lips were scaly. I kept struggling and struggling and he had a hard time keeping me under control but he _was _stronger than I was and I felt helpless and dirty and stupid. Stupid for having let this happen. So _ridiculously stupid_, El, because I'm a _cop _and here I am resorting to screaming my lungs out for somebody _else_ to help me. But trust me, when you feel threatened like that, _truly _threatened, your pride goes out the window so fast –" She pauses to snap her fingers for effect, " – you just put yourself on autopilot and do it. And so I kept screaming and begging, telling myself it would be worth it if even one person heard me. And you know what he did? He just kept laughing, telling me there was nobody to hear. And I knew that he was right. But I kept screaming anyway, knowing it was futile, knowing it was only a matter of time before he subdued me, knowing that all this struggling and screaming was going to be for naught because after all he's this big guy and he's pretty damned determined to do this and I don't have a weapon and he does."

She falters, suddenly, her voice hitching.

He doesn't move a muscle as she regroups. He's mesmerized by her tale, unable to form words.

She manages to continue, but there's a slight tremor to her voice now. "And so I'm trying to prepare myself for when he starts to get my clothes off, how I'm gonna get through it, like, what specifically I'm gonna think about while it's happening, so I can dissociate." She pauses for another second and takes in a ragged breath, clearly struggling to maintain her stoic exterior.

He watches her closely, sees her determination to deliver the entire narrative in stilted sentences as if disengaged and indifferent. He closes his eyes, wanting to shut the story out. He had no idea. He had no idea it had been this bad for her. When she spat out "so it's okay to try to rape me?" to Harris's attorney in the interrogation room, somehow it didn't register in his mind what that really meant. Somehow, because Olivia otherwise seemed so calm and collected, and because he automatically assumed she would have told him everything, he hadn't sat down and thought, really _thought, _what it meant for a perp to _try _to rape his partner in prison. Because all the other times Olivia had ever been threatened, she'd also been protected. By her gun. By backup. By her partner. He had forgotten that this would have been different. That though Fin was nominally there to protect her, as a prisoner she could not protect herself. As a prisoner, she had no _recourse _once Harris grabbed her. She'd been a sitting duck for him.

All at once he understands the horror she's endured, why she's kept silent, and why she is so angry at him.

"And then I catch a lucky break," she continues, having regained some of her composure and still intent on her monologue, oblivious to his sudden insight, "the idiot decides to unshackle me, and so I elbow him and run for my life. And for a minute, all my confidence returns, it's like I'm a cop again, I'm in control, I can get out of this, I'm safe. But you know what, El? There was nowhere to run! I was still trapped! And I hear him in the hall, taunting me, telling me he's going to rape me and then kill me and it hits me all over again that this isn't some situation I can get out of by using my weapon or calling for backup. This is _really happening! He's really going to rape me and then he's really going to kill me!_"

"Liv, I'm so… I'm so sorry," he manages, because he really _is_ so, _so _sorry. Not just about what she went through, but also for acting like it was his right to know about it.

She stops mid-breath, somewhat taken aback by the apology. "Yeah, well… it wasn't your fault."

"That doesn't mean I shouldn't have seen there was something up with you."

She stares up at him with big, haunted eyes. The hostility is gone, but the emptiness and the pain remain. "I didn't _want _you to see it, Elliot. I didn't want you to have those images in your head. Like they are in mine."

He looks into her enormous eyes, wishing he could do something to help her. "I'm your partner, Olivia. I wish you would have trusted me."

She nods sadly. "It wasn't a question of trust. I trust you with my life. I was just… I was ashamed, I guess. I didn't… I didn't know how to say the words." She anticipates he's going to interrupt, tell her she had nothing to be ashamed about, but she sees he's not about to tell her something so trite. She appreciates this about him, and suddenly she wants to tell him everything. "It sounds so mundane given what we see every day, for me to say, 'he tried to rape me.' And honestly, El, when we get a case like that, a woman is _almost _raped, I don't give a lot of thought to it either. She _wasn't _raped, wasn't tortured, wasn't killed. So compared to our other cases, she fared pretty well. But Jesus, El, even getting _almost _raped, there are no words for how… " She swallows and abruptly closes her mouth.

He swiftly closes the space between them and takes her hand in his. "How what?" he asks gently.

"How… terrified I was. I was numb with fear." She looks up at him. Trusting, finally. "I… I had never felt anything like it before. Never in all those years of having guns pointed at my head, or getting hit by my mother, or getting groped by some perp. Getting raped, El, or _thinking _you're about to get raped… there's really nothing else that compares."

"I'm so sorry," he tells her. "I really had no idea."

She nods, accepting the apology at face value. "Your experience in solitary, I get that it was terrible, but you knew you were going to get out. You knew this was just an experiment. You suffered, but a part of it was out of empathy for other people – Donovan – on whose behalves you were suffering. But with Harris… with Harris…. " She begins to sob, choking on her words and he is utterly taken aback; he has never seen his partner cry so spontaneously, let alone for herself. "He was going to _rape_ me and there was nothing I could do about it and I'd never felt so powerless. I _didn't _have recourse, Elliot. He had this baton. He was going to rape me and then he was going to beat me to death!"

He gathers her in his arms. It's the first real physical contact between them in two years and he wonders how he's gone so long without touching her.

"H-he was going to _kill _me," she repeats, hiccupping.

"Shh…. Shh…." he soothes. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry..."

"It wasn't your fault," she whispers, her lips at his bicep. "You couldn't read my mind."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

He goes home that night devastated. He's never felt like this, felt so much pain on another person's behalf.

And then there's his guilt. Guilt that he never did anything to help her. It's true, she didn't want him to know what had happened, but still, it's a pretty crummy excuse. He's an SVU detective, for crying out loud. How could he not have figured out that almost getting raped in a prison is a far cry from being threatened in a police station by a scumbag headed to jail, or even from being stalked by a rapist who's ultimately no match for the fortress of security provided by weapons and technology and manpower and surveillance and a _partner_?

The next day at work she seems fine, as always, but now he can't get it out of his head, what happened to her, even though it was well over a year ago and so many other things have happened to both of them since. It's like a scene from a movie that keeps playing and playing in his head, haunting him: his tough, proud partner at the mercy of someone bigger and stronger who's been given free reign to abuse her as he pleases. And she, screaming for help, begging for her life, realizing nobody is going to come for her.

In his head, he chuckles ruefully; she was right about that too: he has gotten it into his head.

She senses that he's watching her and snaps at him. She doesn't want his pity, which is what she thinks she's getting from him. Hell, she's right. But it's more than that. He's concerned, too. Concerned that his partner's instincts in the aftermath of her attack were to keep working as though nothing had happened. Business as usual. How could anyone possibly function after something like that?

He was in solitary for three days and came out a mess.

She is strong, his partner, of this he is sure, but she is also human. She faltered at the prison yesterday; he saw it. And she could falter again. She could jeopardize both of their lives if she flinches just a little, because a perp somehow reminds her of Harris.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

She is certain that her revelation has upset her partner, but she doesn't have the emotional resources to deal with it. She wonders if she should have also told him that she's been in counseling for the better part of a year, if that would assuage his fears or heighten them.

She wishes she could tell him all her fears, all her doubts and insecurities. She knows he loves her but she also knows he's had a lot on his plate in the last year, between his daughter's bipolar diagnosis and his trying to rebuild his relationship with Kathy and all his near-death experiences.

The irony is that she was going to tell him about Sealview a few weeks ago. Her therapist had suggested that perhaps it was time to tell the person she was closest to in the world, that she was strong enough now and that it was important that she utilize her support system. And so she had made the decision to do it, had rehearsed how she would tell him, the words she would use, had geared herself up for it.

And then she got caught up in the Donovan case and put it off.

And before she knew it, Elliot had decided to go to jail for half a week and everything changed. He came back, fixated on what he had experienced, disappointed and disgruntled that she wasn't interested in launching a crusade with him against solitary confinement in the prison system. Like she let him down or something.

Harris is in solitary; evidently ex-guards don't mesh well with other prisoners.

She found this out, by sheer coincidence, the day Elliot went to jail.

She was glad to hear it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part 4**

A month goes by and things go relatively back to normal.

That is, until he and Olivia bust into a warehouse they suspect is the true scene of their victim's attack and walk right into a gang initiation in the midst of taking place. There's one hysterical girl who's no more than fifteen and six tough boys in their late teens wielding four knives and one gun amongst them. Two of the boys are holding the girl down on a table while a third is trying to get her clothes off; the other three boys are loitering around, watching.

It all happens so fast Elliot doesn't have a chance to ponder whether she's right that they don't have time to call for backup. They draw their guns and surprise the group and the girl manages to escape. But in the midst of the chaos they get surrounded and before Elliot knows it they are both disarmed and Olivia is thrust into the scene.

It takes three guys to hold Elliot back as he struggles to help his partner, who is herself fending off three well-built teenage boys. He's impressed with her skill as she manages to keep them at bay for several minutes – crucial minutes he hopes will buy some time for the girl to find help – but all three tower over her and outweigh her by at least fifty pounds. He knows that without his help she doesn't stand a chance.

Sure enough, within seconds they've got her pinned, bent forward on the table. In one swift maneuver one of them yanks her wrists together over her head, pressing them to the table, and she is completely immobilized. They start to tug at the back of her pants and one of them hands the other his knife to help with the task. Elliot's yelling his lungs out at them, trying to get their attention, trying to warn them how many years they'll get for raping a cop, but the boys ignore him; they are intent on their mission.

He watches in helpless horror as they start to cut her pants away, and suddenly he realizes that she's stopped struggling, stopped screaming. She is bent over the table, her cheek pressed against the flat wooden surface, and she is not moving.

They've got her down to her panties and one of them unzips his pants, clearly identifying himself as number one to do the deed. He pulls out his penis and takes it in one hand and uses the other to lean against the table, positioning himself behind her, getting ready. Any second now, the panties will come off too.

She told him the rest of the story, that night, about Harris's exposing himself after he finally trapped her at the dead end, backhanding her across the face to subdue her once and for all. She told him how close it came, and how, after all that, help did arrive, in the form of Fin. She told him about how the image of Harris like that, leaning so close to her, is what has stuck with her most all these months.

And so now Elliot's grateful for one small thing: her rapist is standing behind her, and so she can't see him, can't see how he's holding himself, can't see the cold, lecherous smile plastered across his young face. For these next few seconds at least, she doesn't know how close it is to happening. Whatever happens next, she won't have this particular image in her mind.

The boy reaches for her panties. Elliot keeps struggling, but he knows it's futile. He's barely aware of the tears running down his face. This is happening, he thinks, _this is really happening. _

No sooner has the thought passed through his mind than backup mercifully arrives. Fin and Munch burst in and wrench the boys off Olivia and Cragen and two unis point guns at the ones keeping Elliot back.

The instant he's free he rushes to her. She's still bent over the table, frozen in the position they forced her into. Her eyes are clenched shut and the side of her face is still pressed firmly to the table's surface and she's clutching the edges for dear life. She doesn't seem aware that it's over, that she can get up now, that Cragen and the team have arrived and that she's safe.

"Liv?" he says gently, leaning over her from behind, deliberately using his body as a shield to block the sight of her. Law enforcement officers are spilling into the room by the dozen, and all of them are male. He doesn't want any further viewing of his partner like this, half-naked and in such a humiliating position.

"Come on," he says softly. He drapes his jacket over her backside and then grasps her tentatively by the armpits, gently tugging, encouraging her to let go of the table's edges. She is shaking, but otherwise unresponsive. "Liv?" he repeats.

She whimpers, and this is the only indication he has that she's still with him. But she won't let go of the table.

"I'm gonna pull you up, okay? Just stay with me. It's over, it's over, okay?" He reaches for her hand and gently pries her fingers away; when she doesn't resist, he does the same with the other hand.

Cragen is approaching, his face twisted into an expression of intense concern and horror. "Elliot?" he asks, looking to her.

Elliot looks up, and they make eye contact. He flashes his boss a warning. _Don't come closer. She's too freaked out._

"Can you stand?" he asks her. There's no response, and so he slowly draws her up onto her feet from behind, clutching her securely by the armpits, taking her weight. "I've got you. I've got you, okay?"

She's standing on her own, but just barely. She stares straight ahead, as if in a trance. Elliot looks to Cragen again and motions with his eyes; now that she's vertical, his jacket is on the verge of slipping right down her hips unless somebody ties it around her waist. Cragen gets the message instantly and steps forward, performing the task as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible as Elliot stands there with her, holding her. The indignity of having her boss ensure she remains covered strikes him, suddenly, hard.

But she's so out of it she doesn't seem to notice.

It occurs to Elliot that later this incident will get written up in a report, and the words that will be used to describe it will be the same words that she used in her report about Sealview. "_Suspects attempted to r_a_pe detective on scene. Backup arrived before this could occur."_

He's appalled by how poorly the words will describe what has actually happened.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Hours later Elliot's lying across her couch still awake, having convinced her to let him stay over. To his surprise she didn't argue when Cragen ordered him to take her to the hospital, and she even accepted the drugs they prescribed to help her sleep. The whole evening, she's let him take over, let him do things for her, let him take care of her.

He had thought he had gained momentous insight when she described Harris's attack, and for the past month he's thought about her story every single day. He's stopped talking about solitary, stopped thinking about Donovan, and stopped resenting that Olivia didn't tell him about Kurt. The suspects he's encountered have paid a higher price than usual, as have his knuckles and a certain metal locker on the second floor of the stationhouse. In his head, Harris has met many a violent, untimely death.

But tonight he realizes that the pictures he's stored in his head for the past month couldn't possibly compare to witnessing it with his own eyes. And he also realizes that his pity and his anger have done nothing to really help her.

_It's always the female,_ he thinks grimly, as he stares at the ceiling.

It's always the female who bears the brunt of everything. They were separated by six boys, and each got three to deal with. They could have beaten Elliot to a pulp but there was never any question which of them was going to sustain the real damage.

He's been hurt more times on the job than she has, but none of the things that have happened to him have really scarred him.

Which is why he was ready to forgive his attacker after one lousy amateur excursion during which he decided there were extenuating circumstances.

Whereas she wishes her attacker to be tossed into the darkest of dungeons and for them to throw away the key.

But it's not because he's stronger and she's weaker. He's not better or smarter.

It's just that while his life has been threatened, his dignity, his pride, his privacy, his _soul, _have not_. _And what is life without those things?

She has faltered on the job many times because of what Harris did to her, but she has also soared. She has saved him, and countless others, including one fifteen year-old girl, because of the strength she's derived from having experienced so many things.

And when he noticed that she was faltering, instead of helping her, he rubbed it in and competed with her. He, who has always put his own family first, had the audacity to suggest she was heartless for not wanting to put all her energy into righting a wrong that he unilaterally and selfishly identified as being the only cause worth fighting for.

She has fought for countless causes, including, ironically, for better treatment of prisoners.

So what if she wasn't interested in fighting for one specific, peculiar aspect of it?

She, of all people, shouldn't have had anything to prove.

If anything, he does.

But it won't come in the form of righting the wrongs of the criminal justice system, or the prison system, nor in expressing his personal outrage at every criminal who walks through his door.

Because even if he could do all of those things, none of it would really help _her_.

And _she_ isworth his tireless, dedicated effort.

Not just because he loves her. But also because she's spent her life fighting for justice and seen so little of it herself.

He finally falls asleep, profoundly worried about her.

But also a little more enlightened.

_The end._


End file.
